commuovere
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
=What makes a memory?
The girl doesn’t know.
She is losing the framework around what she knew.
There was a list, an itemized journal divided into four sections that outlined units of discernment.
How to make sense of her surroundings.
The cells were divided into Iconic, Echoic, Haptic, and Proprioceptive.
Sensory memory is the raw data. Its formation is only slightly linked to the stimulus. The girl would experience an event (stimuli), log it in her SM (sensory memory) and then rely on the four types of memory (IEHP) to recall the event.
The girl didn’t like to think about things. She wasn’t big on using words or logic. The girl relied on the sixth sense—the culmination of the primary tactile senses of sight, touch, taste, scent, and sound.
This proved problematic once she felt love.
How do you know if you love when the object of arousal is gone?
The girl walks past the crabapple trees that cast shadows across the broken sidewalk—a brief history of Cherry Blossom Season. The blossoms opened and dissolved within weeks.
The blossoms are ripe as the girl’s love sonnet. She’d stared into the eyes of a dark-haired boy while wearing bronze eye shadow. Venus aurea. The girl was braver with glitter.
Mental images are stored in the sensory memory. Fleeting icons. Like staring at the sun's edge and watching it burst with your eyes closed. The girl’s contact lenses were dry and she believed that she’d blinked the boy into being. By the time he walked over to the tall stools where she’d perched, she was bleary-eyed and curious.
Did he exist, or was it a flicker of a past impression?
The girl was inclined to tinnitus, the awareness of sound during silence. She heard bells chime in the intervals. A ringing that never ripped into a roar. The doctoress said not to worry; phantom sounds were an invitation to the underworld. The unseen. The girl had always thought of herself as Demeter in the wheat fields.
Perhaps she was the daughter, Persephone. She was baited by impressions.
Echoic senses travel in waves. They lodge themselves into ear hair before being shipped to the temporal lobe—that mid-region of the brain responsible for language, learning and remembering verbal information.
It’s the damn buzzing at the bar. Everyone dressed in stingers. When the dark-hair spoke, the girl couldn’t listen. The girl had shaken her head and the boy laughed with white teeth. He had touched her elbow and leaned in.
Can I kiss you?
Haptic memory is the sense of touch. Hand to a thigh. Mouth to tongue. Teeth to the bottom lip. Neurons fire and travel from the spinal cord to the parietal lobe, where pain and temperature are processed.
His hair in her mouth. Their hands intertwine. The pink bar bends upside down and the Tequila Sunrise is frothy at the bottom. The glass sounds metallic. Later, the girl had thought, I can sort outstanding, later.
They leave as a duo. Then a trio. Then a pair again.
The sun is low as the girl rises. She makes a coffee for one and sits outside on the rotting wood porch steps. Four red tulips spring upright from the dirt. The cream is warm and the girl’s face is runny. She cannot wipe her cheeks. The water is too precious in the desert. The cup is so vast the girl's hands are spread like an eagle’s wings. She sits with the mud and cries into the hard earth.
After the boy leaves in his red truck with cashews and a book with a torn cover on the front seat, the girl goes for a walk. She wears her seafoam green slippers with peep-toes. Her nails are clean and her feet are soft. She moisturizes daily.
Green trees line the street. The cherry blossoms are gone. The stark contrast of root and bud without soft fleshy petals reminds the girl of how lonely she is. The girl has to wait another year to see springtime.
Is knowing that something will appear consolidating?
The girl is tight with longing.
Love is the poem you must write in words. It cannot stay in the body.
The girl understands that language is not fixed; it's ephemeral and too upsetting. She writes to absolve the pain the heart will not release.
With words, she writes the romance she craves.
Photo source.
